A realisation in the dead of night...

Ouch! I woke up this morning (it's only 6am now) with a start. I put two and two together and the answer FOUR came out with such a start it woke me up! I now get the whole reason for the 'moving in' thing with Clare.
I had the two halves of the answer yesterday, I just never put them together. He is insecure and as we know that is the first step in the chain of controlling her. He doesn't trust Clare and wants to control her - admitting as much by his unhappiness at her seeing me. If you trust someone you are never insecure, if you love someone you set them free, and if you want someone to be independent you allow them to do whatever they want. None of these apply.
What do insecure women who can't let a man be free and want him for themselves do time after time? They force them (encourage, manipulate, steer them into, coax, use emotional control) into marriage. Why? To prevent them having a way out and forcing them to be with you.
If you are insecure, lacking in trust and wishing to control so you can "have" a woman to yourself irrespective of what she wants, you force her into living with you. Get some bonds to tie her down with then she can't leave, right? Wrong!
I don't know how clear Clare needs any of this to be made. So far he has cajoled her into breaking up her relationship with the person she loves (cajoled means to "persuade someone through flattery" - excellent term, also can mean "bullied" too in the emotional sense) but wasn't prepared to dump his girlfriend first (insurance policy - better to have any girlfriend at all than do without - so what does that tell you about how he really feels for Clare - I'll have you, but I'm keeping mine until I know you have dumped yours! In other words you are not special, I just fancy you, so I'm not risking being single - any girl is better than no girl! Whatever happened to sacrificing everything for the person you love?! What a coward and a liar!). He is untrusting and insecure, showing that he is in the early stages of being a control freak. Now he is steering her into commitment so she can't escape him.
This is all too awful. It is like watching two cars doing 100mph heading towards eachother, with the person you love sat in one of them.
I know Clare is going to convince herself ( and be convinced by him) that this is what she really wants, and that she knows how she feels about him. I'm sure when she spends next week at his house he will be a charming gentleman - I know he does this, it's his tool of manipulation - and Clare will believe she is doing the right thing. But it is the wrong thing on so many levels.
Apart from the fact he wants to control her so that she is all his and cannot escape (until he decides she can go when he eventually finds someone else - after all, how do you get to 37 and not have a long and steady relationship or at least someone you genuinely love with all your heart - because you are not like that, and you have no idea who or what you want apart from having a girl, any girl, to be with) Clare is not ready to move in with anyone.
Clare felt trapped living with me - but she had freedom to do whatever she wanted. She wanted an Arab horse - she got one. She wanted a car - she got one. She wanted to change the car for a four-wheel drive - she got one. She wants to go and see bands all over the country - we go, and stay in hotels along the way. She had freedom to do these things, but also said "I can't do all the things I really want to do while I am living with someone" and she was frantic to get her itchy feet out into the world and find herself. So what does she do? Move in with someone else?!?!?!?!? NO - this is so wrong for her.
The first months will be bliss for her - I have no doubt. He will work hard against all his natural instincts in order to keep her. I'm sure the fact he will be cooking everything won't bother him, or the piles of clothes on the floor won't bother him, the temper tantrums won't bother him, the moments of utter madness when hormones take over won't bother him, the being treated badly when she is in PMT won't matter, the crazy schemes and ideas that rip the security out of the relationship when she gets itchy feet won't bother him - ALL UP TO A POINT. But what happens when the instant hit of sexual gratification goes? What happens when you are with a 33 year old woman who is unhappy, frustrated, wanting to go and do things with her life, having a tantrum, hormonally imbalanced, doesn't feel like sex right now, starts leaving the house in a mess, complaining she is hungry and there's nothing in, and starts to wonder if she has done the right thing? I tell you what happens - unless you love her more than anything else in the whole world then you suddenly start finding other girls at work more attractive, and we know from his track record where that goes.
Clare's mum will be unable to sleep at night when she gets this bombshell. It's knocked me for sure. Clare has just ended a relationship because she wanted total freedom, and now for the convenience of not having to live at her parents' house she is heading straight back into the straight-jacket. What happens when he comes in from work and sits in front of the TV all night because he is tired out, and doesn't want to do anything. Back where we started aren't we?
The terrible irony is the fact that at that moment I shall probably be in Scandanavia or a recording studio, or driving to Glasgow to see Nightwish, or in France on holiday, or maybe even just in town having a jump up and down to anything noisy and with guitars in it! The irony is tragic.

Clare is free to do what she likes - I made that mistake before of trying to 'steer' her in a certain direction. Her happiness is the only thing that matters to me. If she wants to settle down and live the restricted domestic housewife role then so be it - but I don't believe for a second she wants to. And believe me this is where it is going - "I'm working full time and you only have a part time job, why is the house a mess? Where is my dinner? What do you do all day?" and so on - you can't see it now, but it's coming! How can it be any different with a full-time head guide and Clare not having a 'career' as such because she values life and all its variety too much.

The thing I always loved, and still do, about Clare is the fact she is a free spirit. She thinks outside the box all the time. She isn't restricted by the confines of what you are supposed to think. She doesn't care for careers and settling down, she cares for life! She cares for freedom and the ability to just go off freely and do whatever the moment takes you to. She has a free mind and a clever sharp one at that. She has an imagination bigger than any box you can try and fit it into - the world itself is not big enough to fit Clare's hopes, ambitions and life goals into. She is a universal person. So being penned into a flat in Cheddar and working part time in a shop is most likely her worst nightmare, and it will stifle her brilliance and her flare to be an individual. She will be on £5 an hour and struggling with Council Tax instead of walking over the hills of Finland, or doing reiki on Tibetan monks, or swimming in the sea off the coast of New Zealand, or any of the other million things that are to do out there! Believe me, I KNOW! I have a list as high as Canary Wharf and growing! There is lost time to be made up for years of idiotic time wasting and apathy, and now if anything I am the one with itchy feet!

I hope Clare finds the courage to do what is right, and to respect herself and not be cajoled any further - I am 36 and look at the last few years with utter regret at what I haven't done, and what I lost. I don't want her to do the same...